The runners and guards drew themselves up around the two litters, the mare and the donkey; but Caleb walked in front of the travellers, mincing elegantly on the tips of his red riding-boots and holding the hem of his burnous in his swaying hand. It was as though he were always dancing, whether on horseback or on foot.
“The Museum,” Caleb explained, “is, as your lordships know, the Academy of Alexandria, founded by the beautiful Cleopatra.”
“That is not true,” Thrasyllus whispered to his young master. “It was founded by Ptolemy the First.”
“Here philosophers and scholars in every branch of science devote themselves to study; and they are surrounded by thousands of disciples from all countries. But both masters and pupils are as poor as rats and do not, all told, possess … that!” said Caleb, with a flip of his finger and thumb.
“The Museum has produced great scholars,” Thrasyllus expounded, more appreciatively, “such as Euclid, Erasistratus and Diophantus; then there were the poets Theocritus, Aratus, Callimachus; and among critics Aristarchus; and among philosophers more than I could name.”
“And because they are so poor, all these learned gentry,” said Caleb, with a laugh, pointing, as they entered the gardens of the Museum through a portico, to stately white-cloaked figures walking to and fro, “because they are so poor, they live on a fund provided by the State: they’re no use for anything, these learned gentry; but they are certainly clever, my lords, they’re all that: you won’t find their equals for cleverness anywhere. And the books they collect! Their library is quite famous. … Look,” continued Caleb, pointing, “it is just the time when they have their midday meal: it seems to be philosophical to do so earlier than princely nobles are used to do. No doubt it will interest you, as strangers, to see so many very wise and poverty-stricken scholars and philosophers eating their black broth.”
The colonnades of the Museum loomed aloft; there were statues to commemorate famous men of learning; and there was an immense rounded exedra, from which lectures were delivered at frequent intervals. The travellers entered the cenaculum, the refectory, which was wide, lofty and very long; the scholars and philosophers sat eating at long tables; Lucius was struck by the fact that they were sitting, instead of reclining.
“They don’t know any better,” Caleb explained. “They just sit down for a moment and gobble up their broth; they are not epicures, they are only just clever, you see. They have more in their heads, my lords, than in their pockets. But they have plenty in their heads beyond a doubt.”
A philosopher moved towards the strangers. He was very old, frail and grey and looked like a long dry stalk, in his toga. He smiled and mumbled words which at first were incomprehensible. From the folds of his garment he stretched forth a clawlike hand. He was begging; and Lucius gave him some money.
“The highest philosophy is … to be satisfied with little,” he then said, plainly, in pure Greek.
And he bowed, ironically, and turned away with the movement of a long dry stalk, in his dirty cloak.
“The shameless rascal!” cried Uncle Catullus, indignantly.
But Lucius laughed and looked down the long table at which the men of learning ate. Sometimes a beggar would come up to them; and they gave him their bread and fruit. Sometimes, too, dogs snuffled around; and the men of learning flung them their offal, over which the dogs choked greedily. Two ibises also walked in ludicrous high-legged state through the cenaculum, pecking here and there, and kept the floor clean, though they themselves were not so cleanly.
The travellers returned to their litters; and, amid much shouting and cursing and swearing at street-boys and cracking of whips at beggars, the procession started, while Caleb, for no reason, insisted on making his mare rear and curvet across the street with elegant movements of her forefeet.
But now, smiling with his black eyes and white teeth, he bent to one side, low enough almost to slip from his mount, and asked Lucius:
“Would your lordship now like to see the Soma?”
And through the public gardens of Bruchium, along the Paneum—an artificial little rocky mountain built up in the shape of a top or pineapple—the procession trotted to the Soma, the burying-place of the Ptolemies, where it lay in the cool shade of sycamores and tamarisks. A long avenue of recumbent sphinxes, male—bearded—and female—high-breasted—led to the pyramid tombs. The travellers alighted and the old priests in charge appeared.
“These distinguished strangers wish to see the burial-places of the Ptolemies,” said Caleb. “They are princely nobles and no doubt will also be interested in the tomb of Alexander the Great.”
“Death is but a slumbering and a twilight transition to the halls of eternal sunshine,” replied the priest in charge. “Earthly greatness is the perishable step to the imperishable palace of Osiris, where our dead monarchs now sit enthroned around him, their heads circled with the pschent and their hands grasping the scarab sceptre. And great Isis has appeared to them as the splendour of truth, for she lifted her veil for their delight, so that they saw her. Life is but a dream, death is a bridge and eternity is life.”
Caleb walked mincingly in front, on the tips of his red riding-boots, and pointed out things, while the old priest went on reciting the eternal verities, as though to himself, The tombs of granite, porphyry and marble, inscribed with hieroglyphics, rose like temples, pyramid-shaped. The priest now went in front of the travellers and descended a few steps: inside, in the subterranean vault, invisible, the mummies rested in their painted sarcophagi; standing lamps burned on their tripods, perfumes rose in a cloud from vases and dishes; and daintily-coloured glass
